UMass activists appeal Amherst Town Council for more on-campus housing

AMHERST — An activist organization at the University of Massachusetts is appealing to the Amherst Town Council to issue a formal statement requesting construction of more on-campus, university-owned housing for students.

“I ask this because the situation for students is untenable and the pressure it places on the town is untenable,” Daniel Shapiro, a UMass student and Rolling Green Apartments resident, told the Town Council at its Feb. 2 meeting.

A representative of the Sunrise Movement, Shapiro said the group is pushing for more housing more than a year after UMass issued a request for proposal to find a developer to renovate existing dorms and build new housing on campus.

“There has been no progress, and we need more housing on our campus that doesn’t put pressure on the local housing market,” Shapiro said. “Our school needs to pull its weight.”

He added that students find it unacceptable that the cheapest rent for a room at Fieldstone, the first public-private partnership development on campus, is $1,603 per month.

UMass spokeswoman Emily Gest said the request for proposal process that began in January 2025 is still underway and no developer has been selected yet, adding that the university appreciates housing is an important issue and a priority for Gov. Maura Healey.

“Housing is a complex issue that the university has focused on for decades and one that the university regularly discusses with local governments as well,” Gest said.

Still, Gest said UMass houses one of the largest percentages of students on campus in comparison to to its national peers. Of 209 ranked public universities, UMass is among the top five for highest percentage of on-campus students, with 60% of undergraduates living on the campus.

The appeal from Sunrise was brought to the Town Council a few weeks after councilors voted against adding a specific demand in a new housing production plan for UMass to construct more on-campus housing. That plan offers a recommendation of getting 700 to 900 new housing units constructed by 2030 and strategies to meet that goal.

The plan includes statements such as “encourage the development of student housing” and “encourage the development of more student housing and workforce housing,” but did not have the phrase “including the UMass campus” added. An attempt to add that phrase failed by a 7-6 vote, though since adopting the plan in December the Town Council has four new members.

Gest presented a statistic showing the challenges for UMass. One is that since the pandemic, more rising juniors and seniors have opted to remain on campus, rather than seeking off-campus housing.

UMass has added thousands of beds on campus in the past 20 years. These include 150 student-family apartments, available to students with dependents, more than 1,000 beds in the dorms at the Commonwealth Honors College and the 824 beds for undergraduates and graduate students at Fieldstone.

The pressure has also been addressed in both Amherst and neighboring Sunderland where hundreds of new housing units have been built, many of which support students, as well as the university’s faculty and staff.

The housing production plan adopted by the Town Council has been submitted to the state’s Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities so Amherst can be eligible for various grants. It sets forth a path for developing affordable housing that meets the state’s Chapter 40B law, with at least 10% of the town’s housing stock for low- and moderate-income families to achieve safe harbor designation from the state.

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